Prolegomenon to a history of paleoanthropology: The study of human origins as a scientific enterprise. Part 2. Eighteenth to the twentieth century

Abstract

Modern scientific theories of human origins can be traced directly back to the discoveries, arguments, and theories of the seventeenth century. But as we have seen in the first part of this paper, a great many critical steps had been taken, ideas proposed, and discoveries made long before this. The scientific advances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed much to ancient science, while still retaining many aspects of the medieval Christian world view. Yet both science and Christianity changed significantly as a result of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the voyages of exploration, and the changes wrought on European society as a result of industrialization. The question of human origins was directly affected by the archeological study of prehistoric ruins, new geological theories, the study of fossils, the discovery of “savage” peoples living in the New World, and the comparison of prehistoric stone implements from Europe with those collected in the New World. This proliferation of new discoveries, new theories, and the emergence of completely new scientific disciplines in the seventeenth century laid the foundation for the dramatic new discoveries and theories that came over the next three centuries.

The most brutal of human skulls: measuring and knowing the first Neanderthal

“…8 This was not surprising: discussion of human 'races' had become common by the nineteenth century, as taxonomists tried to understand human variation. 9 The study of human-looking fossils was framed by this understanding of race, with the Feldhofer remains being no exception. 10 The press coverage sparked the interest of anatomists at the nearby University of Bonn, foreshadowing the important role press coverage would play in human-origins research throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.…”

The Seventy-Year Itch: Controversies over Human Antiquity and Their Resolution

“…There is no need in the case of the two earlier ones. Although they may not be as well known as the most recent episode, they have each been thoroughly investigated and need only be summarized here (on the establishment of human antiquity in Europe in the 1850s, see Daniel 1976;Goodrum 2004;Grayson 1983Grayson , 1990Gruber 1965;Oakley 1964;Van Riper 1993; on the 1920s establishment of a Pleistocene human antiquity in America, see Hinsley 1976Hinsley , 1981Hinsley , 1985Meltzer 1983Meltzer , 1991Meltzer , 1994Meltzer , 2003Meltzer , 2006Wilmsen 1965).…”